<p>George was at the teachers&rsquo; meeting. He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him. To begin with, he didn&rsquo;t know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was &ldquo;fairly&rdquo; sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he &lsquo;believed&rsquo; that he had been born in 1944&ndash;1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two.</p>

<p>For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary? For the future, for the unborn. His mind hovered &mdash; for a moment round the doubtful date on the page, and then fetched up with a bump against the Newspeak word doublethink. For the first time the magnitude of what he had undertaken came home to him. How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it would not listen to him: or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless&hellip;</p>
